


Don't Fret

by Qpenguin98



Series: Brothers AU [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff and Angst, Keith and Shiro are Adoptive Siblings, Keith whump, M/M, Sickfic, Whump, lots of sleeping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 11:29:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9233219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qpenguin98/pseuds/Qpenguin98
Summary: It starts with a headache.Keith gets sick.





	

It starts with a headache after they land on a planet for supplies. He’d slipped on the way out of Red, not expecting the mud, and landed face first into it. As funny as it was to the others, the front of his suit was covered in mud, and he begrudgingly followed them into the market, trying his best to wipe it off, but failing.

Keith equates the headache to hitting his head when he fell, but he’s pretty sure he didn’t hit it that hard.

Lance, who hasn’t really left his side since they landed, has started doodling little designs into the mud covered armor. Keith, too focused on trying to ignore the pounding of his head, lets him.

“So, have you been holding out on me? Is all of your balance and upright standing just a façade? Are you really just super clumsy?”

“No,” he says, nudging Lance off of him, and his vision swims. “I wasn’t expecting the mud.”

“Allura literally told us this planet was prone to wet seasons and marshy terrain before we left. Are you saying you weren’t listening?” He drags the last word out, twisting around to stand in front of him, smile big.

“Yes I was listening,” he snaps. “I just didn’t think we’d be landing in the marshy parts.”

“Look around,” Lance says. “This whole place is marshy parts.”

The headache pulses behind his eyes and he brings one miraculously not mud covered hand up the them and rubs. “Let’s just find some stuff to get and leave.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” He drops his hand, shakes his arms out. “I’m fine, let’s go.”

The headache gets worse and Lance keeps looking at him worriedly. He’s mumbling stuff into a private com link in his helmet, one Keith can’t hear. He can’t really feel his fingers anymore. He keeps moving them to try and regain feeling, but no luck.

Lance stops at this table with these small, squishy blue orbs. They’re apparently meant to be food. Keith vaguely registers Lance asking to try one. He turns to him with the half eaten orb and pauses, grabbing Keith’s shoulder with his free hand. The world stops spinning.

“You’re swaying really bad right now. Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?”

“I’m…” he starts and stops. His voice feels like fuzz in his ears. He swallows, moves his tongue around. It feels tingly.

One second he’s standing, and the next he’s on the ground with Lance trying to hold him up.

“Hey, can you hear me? Focus on my voice.” He’s rubbing small circles on his back, and it’s nice. A comforting distraction from his body turning against him. He brings a hand up to his forehead and it comes back sticky and wet.

“What?”

“You clipped your head on the table. It’s okay. Do you think you can stand? I want to get you back to the castle.”

“Lance I’m fi—,” he tries to stand up on his own and his everything protests. His vision swims and he’s pretty sure his limbs are about to give out. A feeling of cold washes over him and he sit back down hard. Lance holds him in an upright sitting position and frowns.

“That’s not good,” he mumbles. He presses a button on the side of his helmet. “Hey guys? I’m gonna take Keith back to the castle. He kind of just blacked out and he is not looking too great.”

It’s weird hearing double, Lance saying the words right in front of him, and the slightly delayed replay in his helmet. He starts feeling sick and pulls the offending thing off of his head. Lance gives him a look before his attention is pulled back.

He says something about Keith, but he’s not listening anymore, eyes pressed into his knees in an attempt to stop the headache. It doesn’t exactly work. Lance presses an uncovered wrist to his forehead and says something else. His wrist is cool and Keith leans into him.

“Hey,” Lance says softly, and Keith raises his head to meet his eyes. “I’m gonna help you up, okay?”

He nods and bites his tongue when the action turns out to be a mistake. He mutes his com link and puts the helmet back on his head. Lance hooks an arm under his shoulder and Keith braces himself.

“Alright, three, two, up!” Everything lurches and his eyesight blacks out for a second. He slumps onto Lance, doesn’t have enough energy to feel embarrassed. Lance doesn’t move, waiting for him to get used to standing again.

His brain feels like it’s floating and his stomach twists painfully and he takes the hand not currently wrapped around Lance to grab at his free hand.

They go very slowly, mostly because Keith keeps tripping over his own feet. He’s not sure why all control he has over his body is going out the window, but he doesn’t like it. Lance is mostly just dragging him by the time they make it to his lion. Keith suddenly realizes the implications.

“What about Red?” he asks roughly.

“Shiro’s bringing her back, don’t worry. You focus on not falling over, okay?”

He sits against a cool wall when they’re inside Blue. He pulls his helmet off again, unmuting it so he can hear the muffled chatter. His entire body feels like it’s overheating and he presses his face into the metal.

He knows that reasonably the flight back up to the castle doesn’t take long, but his perception of time is messed up and it feels like a mixture between two seconds and two hours. He feels it when they stop, but he doesn’t make any move to get up.

“Keith.”

He opens his eye to the concerned face of Lance. He’s crouched down in front of him.

Nausea creeps its way up his throat, and he bites his tongue hard to get it to go away. He is not going to vomit in a lion that isn’t even his. As awful as he’s feeling, he will not let that happen.

“We need to get you to Coran to see if he can figure out what’s wrong with you.”

“Mmm,” is all he says in response. Lance pulls him up by his arms and Keith rests his weight on his shoulder again.

It’s weird walking so slowly through the halls. His vision’s twisting things around and he can’t exactly see clearly, so he closes his eyes, trusts Lance not to let him run into anything.

They immediately run into a table corner, and he groans, pain sparking up his thigh.

“Fuck, sorry, sharp corner.”

The rest of the walk is table corner free, but Keith keeps his eyes open anyway. Coran is waiting for them, but it’s weird. His face is all fuzzy and blurred. His world is spinning again and he realizes dimly that Lance is sitting him down.

“Number four’s not looking too good. What happened?”

Keith can’t for the life of him remember why Coran would be calling him number four, and it hurts his head trying to figure it out. There’s a tugging sensation on his chest and he opens his eyes to see Lance pulling the armor off of him. The cold air that cuts through the black fabric makes him shiver.

“Cold,” he mumbles. He thinks Lance frowns, but with his vision still swimming he’s not sure.

“You’re burning up,” he says, and it’s funny. Because he’s the supposed fire guardian or whatever and his lion has cool fire powers. He huffs out a laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Coran asks from over Lance’s shoulder.

“…’s cause I’m the fire paladin.”

Keith leans forward too far while laughing and bumps his head against something soft and solid. He looks up to see Lance and realizes he’s kind of just smushed his face into his chest. This makes things even funnier.

Something twinges in his stomach and then everything’s back to hurting again, he hadn’t even realized it had stopped. He groans, and when Lance tries to pull back, he grabs his wrist tightly and doesn’t let him.

“Don’t,” he mumbles softly. He wants this small reprieve from the pain, someone close and familiar and calming enough to his nerves that he feels comfortable. He can see the tension Lance is holding in himself, and for a second he feels bad asking this much when he doesn’t know if what’s wrong with him is contagious or not, but it’s only for a moment until Lance sits next to him, wrapping his arms around his side.

“Coran, will you check his temperature?”

Something gets stuck in his ear and he makes a face. It feels like he’s back in elementary school, with the nurse that never knew how to work anything. The thing in his ear beeps.

“One hundred three point five. That’s much higher than all of your temperatures usually are.”

“Lance? Lance why do the aliens have the same temperature scale as we do? Why do they have that?”

Lance doesn’t answer him, instead gets up to go to the sinks. Keith bites back the needy whine in the back of his throat, wraps his arms around himself in an attempt to get warmer. When the damp, cold thing is pressed to his forehead, he flails out, smacks it away before curling back up.

“Keith, man, what the hell?”

“It’s cold,” he says, shivering. A blanket is dropped on his shoulders and he wraps himself up gratefully. Lance tries the cloth again, only to be met with the same reaction.

“Keith, you heard him. Your fever’s really high, we’ve gotta cool you down, make you drink a bunch of water, all that good stuff.”

“It’s obviously wrong because I’m fucking freezing.”

“What are you, five?”

Keith huffs out a breath, brings up his shoulders and doesn’t take the bait. He can hear Lance quietly asking Shiro through the coms whether or not he always acted like a toddler when he got sick, and he tightens the blanket.

A cup of something warm that smells like strawberries is pressed into his hands, and he takes a sip. It tastes… off. Not like strawberries, but like something else, but he can’t focus his brain enough to get past it. It tastes good, and he takes another drink.

“What is this?” he mumbles into the cup.

“Shoompher flower tea! Settles stomachs and headaches. It should do just the trick for you.”

His everything still hurts, but the tea tastes good, so he sips on it.

Keith is used to taking care of himself while he’s sick. In the desert, he didn’t get sick often, but there were the few times he ate something too old, didn’t cook something for long enough, caught something when he went into the small town for food and supplies. He’d tough it out for a few days, shuffling around with water and a blanket and taking a break from his investigation of the caves.

Even when he was still at the Garrison, he’d go until he collapsed. He didn’t want to miss anything, didn’t want to worry Shiro, but he always ended up worrying him more by letting it get worse. Then it lasted longer than it would have had he just said something in the first place.

He’s not sure where this sudden onset of absolute sick feeling has come from, but he knows it wasn’t something building up. This is new today, and he doesn’t like it.

Lance sits next to him again and Keith kind of curls himself around him. Lance looks amused.

“You’re clingier than I thought you’d be.”

“’m not clingy.”

“You’re like hanging off my arm right now. I’d call that clingy.”

“I mean not usually,” he mumbles into the black fabric of Lance’s suit. “This feels worse, and you feel good.”

Coran says something too quiet for him to hear, and he’s grateful. Everything is too loud right now. Lance brushes his hair back, and it feels nice.

“Hey. Coran says there’s nothing physically wrong with you, so putting you in the pods won’t do anything. Until he can figure out what’s wrong with you and make some medicine, you’re gonna have to tough it out.”

It takes Keith a second to process, and when it clicks, he groans. He _hates_ being sick, hates having to go through all the bedrest and sitting around with nothing to do but sleep. They can’t afford for him to be sick now, not when they’re still fighting Galra. They could need Voltron or his lion for speed or someone else could get hurt and if he’s out of commission-

He doesn’t realize his headache is getting worse thinking about this until he realizes the low keening sound that’s been getting progressively louder is coming from him. His eyes throb and he can’t actually open them without making the pain ten times worse.

He’s gripping something tightly in his hand, and whatever that thing is is rubbing circles on top of his hand. He takes a second to focus on what exactly he’s squeezing the life out of and realizes he’s got Lance’s hand in a death grip.

He sucks in fast, shallow breaths and everything just hurts worse. There’s a burst of pain at the back of his neck, and he vaguely feels himself slipping forward as he blacks out.

\---

When Keith wakes up there’s something damp covering his eyes. Nausea crawls up his throat and he can’t keep it down. Something concave is pressed in his hands and he vomits into it. He hovers over the bowl for a minute before pulling the washcloth off of his eyes.

Shiro’s sitting next to him in a chair he’s never seen before. It looks soft and cushy.

“Where’d the chair come from?” The gravel in his voice surprises him. Shiro gives him a look.

“You’re really asking about a chair right after throwing up?”

“It’s new and looks soft. Where’d it come from?”

“Storage. We’re in a system of shifts to watch you, so something comfortable is nicer than just a table chair.”

Keith makes a face. “I don’t need to be watched over like some little kid.”

“You threw up three times in your sleep and haven’t woken up for two days. At this point I’m pretty sure you’d be dead if someone wasn’t looking after you.”

His mouth feels like sand. “Two days?”

Shiro nods and takes the bowl from him, sets it on a nearby table. “You were sleep talking. You started asking for mom at one point, then you started screaming about how she needed to get out of the house. It was… not fun.”

He draws his knees up, presses his face into them. He still feels like trash, stomach and head dully hurting, but he feels worse now. “Sorry.”

In the corner of his eye, he sees Shiro sit up. “What for?”

Keith doesn’t say anything, curls up tighter. He’s mad at himself for getting so weak, letting himself talk in his sleep, especially about that.

“Keith, what… oh. No, no no no not that. I didn’t mean—,” Shiro sighs. “I meant that you not waking up and delirious was bad not that you… not that you brought up mom.”

He wraps an arm around him. Keith starts.

“What about—”

“Coran says you’re not contagious, and even if you were, do you think I’d care?”

The stomachache flares up and he groans into his knees. Shiro rubs circles in his back.

“This sucks,” he says into the blanket.

“Coran’s doing blood tests right now to figure it out.”

He huffs and faces Shiro.

“Is there any water?”

He nods and hands him a pouch. It’s cold and feels incredible on his raw throat. He downs it in about twenty seconds. Shiro puts a hand to forehead as Keith starts another pouch.

“Your fever’s gone down a little.”

Everything still hurts, so he’s not exactly sure how better he’s getting, but he nods, sipping more on the water.

“You should get some more rest.”

“I just slept for two days, how much more could I need?”

He has to admit to himself, however, that he still feels incredibly tired. He sets the pouch down on the table and lays back down on his side.

“Just for a second,” he mumbles, eyes slipping closed.

“Just for a second,” Shiro agrees.

\---

When he wakes up next, it’s to Lance brushing the hair out of his face. Everything’s back to being wobbly and unfocused, and he feels worse than he did when he woke up last. He tries sitting himself upright, but his hands slip and he ends up face-down in his pillow.

“Whoa, whoa, take it easy, man.” Lance helps him up, and his head spins. He steadies himself, grabs Lance’s wrists.

He’s cold again, shivering. Lance is frowning. “Your fever went up again.”

The wall is moving behind Lance’s head, and it messes with his eyes. Or maybe his eyes are messing with him. He shuts them, leans his weight on Lance.

There’s a second of uncertainty, and then Lance moves from the chair onto the bed next to Keith. He wraps his arms around him almost immediately, relishing in the warmth. Lance pets his hair back again.

“I’ll say it again; you are super clingy.”

“Maybe I just like you,” Keith mutters into his shirt.

Lance stammers for a second. “Keith, we’re _dating_ I would hope so.”

“Details.”

They’re both quiet for a minute.

“Do you need anything?”

“Just you is nice.”

“Oh my god,” he can tell Lance is blushing by the tone of his voice. “Stop saying cute shit while you’re sick.”

Keith curls his legs up around Lance’s, rolls around a bit to get comfortable, and rests his head on Lance’s chest.

“You’re really cushy,” he mumbles, eyes blinking slowly.

“And you’re really cuddly. We should do this sometime when you’re not sick. It’s kind of nice.”

“Did Coran figure it out yet?”

“Nah, but I think he’s close. He was muttering something about mud when I left, though, so maybe he has no idea.”

Keith hums, settles back down.

“Hey.”

“Hmm?”  
“If you want to sleep some more, that’s okay. This sickness is kicking your ass and you should probably rest more.”

“No,” he says. “I wanna stay up.”

“Right, I forgot you act like a five year old when your fever’s high.”

“No I don’t,” he objects weakly. “I don’t.”

Everything hurts again and he makes this sad little noise against Lance’s sternum.

“Shhh, okay, okay, you don’t. Just relax.” He sifts his fingers through his hair. “You don’t have to go to sleep, just close your eyes for me, okay?”

He nods, shutting his eyes as Lance starts humming. He can feel the vibrations through his cheek, and it’s nice, soft. He vaguely hears the door open, hears someone ask if he wants to switch shifts. The humming stops.

“Not yet,” he says quietly. “I’m gonna stay for a little longer.”

The door shuts again, and Lance continues humming, brushing his hair back, rubbing circles on his shoulder.

He doesn’t realize he’s falling asleep until he’s already too far gone.

\---

Coran shakes the two of them awake a few hours later, surrounded by the others in his room. The first thing Keith thinks when he wakes up is that it’s incredibly cramped and that seven people weren’t meant to fit in their bedrooms.

“Keith!” Coran near shouts. “I’ve figured it out!”

He holds out a cup of clear, sharp smelling liquid to him. Lance is still waking up above him, and Keith is feeling okay enough to be embarrassed. It’s not the fact that Lance is there, just the fact that everyone else is. Big displays of affection are weird for him, and having literally everyone in the castle surrounding them waking up together is uncomfortable. He detangles himself from Lance.

“Mm what’s happening?” Lance mumbles as he sits up.

“While you two were busy cuddling, Coran figured out what was wrong with Keith. He hasn’t told anyone, he wanted to give you the medicine first.”

Lance says, “I’m the master sick cuddler so that’s a compliment,” at the same time that Keith says, “We weren’t cuddling.”

There’s an uncomfortable pause.

“Well,” Coran clears his throat, drawing their attention back to him. “Drink this. It might take a few hours to fully get in your system, but you should be just fine tomorrow.”

He downs the whole cup, and it _burns_. He coughs for what feels like a solid minute after, eyes watering. “What the hell was that?”

Beezleberry juice! When you fell back on the supply run, you must have swallowed some of the mud. It had some nasty parasites in it.”

He watches as Pidge’s eyes go wide. “Vore,” they whisper quietly. Hunk starts laughing and Shiro looks horrified.

“No!” he turns to them. “No, why do you know what that is?!”

Keith has to stifle his own laugh, reaching for a nearby water pouch. The two Alteans look confused, which he expected, but the surprise factor is Lance. He looks like he’s trying really hard to figure out what they’re talking about.

“What’s vore?” he asks tentatively.

The other three stare at him, and Pidge is about to start explaining before Shiro slaps a hand over their mouth.

“Nope. We are not doing that. I don’t want to hear your explanation for that.”

“Well Lance,” Hunk tries, but Shiro’s other hand comes up.

“And I guess we’re leaving! Keith, tell me if the medicine doesn’t work.”

He mock salutes them on their way out, followed by a confused Coran and Allura.

Lance turns to him. “I have several questions.” Keith averts his eyes. “Let’s start with the easy one. What’s vore?”

Keith snorts out a laugh and Lance makes a face. “Sorry, it’s just, you’re friends with Pidge and Hunk and you don’t know what vore is.”

“It never came up!”

“It’s the eating people kink.” He pauses for effect. “Usually with like, really tiny people in drawings getting swallowed.”

The look of shock and disgust on Lance’s face is one he wishes he could take a picture of to look at later. “Oh my god. That’s so nasty.”

“Would you expect anything less from them?”

He makes a noise and sticks his tongue out. “Gross.”

Keith scoots himself back next to Lance. He knows what the next question is and he figures he should show he’s still actually comfortable being next to him. He wants to start the conversation, but he’s not sure what to say.

“Why do you know what that is?”

Keith blanches, response dying. “What?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t assume you’re into literally eating people, and even if you are, I am drawing the line right now and saying no to that. But where the hell did you learn what that is?”

“Um,” he wasn’t actually expecting a follow up question on this. “Matt was over at the dorm one time and mentioned something about it, so I asked. Shiro tried to do what he just did with Pidge, but he was all the way across the room and Matt can talk really fast when he wants to.”

“Why does Shiro know what vore is?”

“Are these actually your ‘several questions,’ or are you just stalling?”

Lance clams up, twitches his fingers together a couple times. “Why, uh, why’d you immediately refuse the fact that we were cuddling? I mean, that’s what we were doing. We were literally sleeping together. I thought that was okay? Did I misread something?”

“No,” Keith says. “It’s fine, and I know that’s what we were doing, but…” explaining things gets hard for him sometimes, and his throat still feels raw. He takes a sip from the water pouch. “I like… cuddling with you. And stuff like that. It’s nice. But, other people being there is, it’s—”

He cuts himself off, because he’s fucking this up in every sense of the phrase. “I don’t like affection in front of other people.”

Lance makes an o with his mouth, has a look of relief flash through his eyes. He opens his mouth to say something but Keith cuts him off.

“I mean, I know you do, and I’m trying, and some stuff is fine, it was just waking up with you and everyone being there and seeing that was—”

“Hey, hey whoa calm down. It’s fine if you don’t want me to show my tender love to you in front of other people. We can keep that private.”

Keith groans and rubs his face in his hands. It’s unsettlingly greasy. “You ruined it. The moment. It’s gone.”

Lance laughs, pulling Keith closer to him. “That’s what I do. But really, if you don’t want to cuddle and kiss and hand hold and all that good stuff in front of other people it’s fine.”

“Hand holding is fine,” he says quietly. He rests his head on Lance’s shoulder and curls their hands together. “This is fine.”

“Oh? Just no hardcore cuddling then. No arms around your waist or kissing your cheek, or braiding your hair in the middle if the common room. None of that?”

He does all this as he says it, and Keith briefly wonders if his hair is actually as gross as it feels, and if it is, how Lance is managing.

“Maybe hair braiding,” he says, pulling his head away from Lance’s fingers. “If I’m feeling it. But not right now, because I need a shower.”

“Aw, you’re no fun.”

“I am the most fun, and the most fun needs a shower.”

He tries to stand up, but his head’s still woozy and he hasn’t eaten anything in three days. Lance grabs him before he falls on his face.

“Maybe some food first?”

“But I’m _dirty_.”

“How did you survive in the desert for a year again?”

“There was a well. I had water. It wasn’t ever hot, but it was there.”

“Take a sit down shower?”

Keith wrinkles his nose. “That’s a bath.”

“No. Where you sit in the shower. You take a shower, but you sit down.”

“That just sounds stupid.”

“Weigh your options here. Do you want to be clean? Or do you not want to be clean.”

“I wanna be clean,” he mutters.

“What was that?”

“I wanna be clean,” he says again, louder.

“Couldn’t quite hear you.”

“I wanna be clean!” he yells, and then starts coughing.

“Ah,” Lance grabs the water for him. “Sorry.”

He takes a drink, gets the remaining coughs out. “It’s fine.”

Lance walks him to the showers, leaves him a clean pair of clothes. He stammers out an offer to wait outside.

“I-I mean, you can’t walk really well on your own, and, uh, if I’m here, it’s easier than waiting for someone to randomly walk by. I could get the helmets, but then you have to deal with that—”

“Lance, it’s just a shower. It’s not like I’m inviting you to get in with me.”

“Right,” he breathes out a sigh and relaxes. “Right.”

Keith takes the clothes from Lance and shuffles his way into the showers, holding the wall to steady himself.

He manages to not take a sit down shower by leaning against the wall for most of it. He hates how weak he is, unable to stand upright for very long without getting dizzy again. The headache abates slowly. The stomachache and the nausea stick around, he assumes because he still hasn’t eaten anything.

He wants to go train the sluggishness out of his limbs, but he knows he can’t take two steps without falling over right now, and it’s infuriating.

The water feels nice on his skin, burning its way under the layer of grime that’s accumulated over the past few days. He stays in for what’s probably longer than necessary before getting out and drying himself off.

He’s doing good with his balance getting his clothes on, until he’s faced with the pants. He gets one leg in fine, then somehow his leg gets stuck in the second one and he trips. His head slams into the bench on his way down and it _hurts_. A lot.

“Ow,” he says against the tile floor.

“Keith?” Lance sounds nervous, ready to come in. With numb fingers, he pulls his pants the rest of the way up while he’s still on the ground.

“I’m okay,” he’s says loud enough to be heard through the door. Using the offending bench, he pulls himself back up. He grabs a washcloth to press against the reopened cut on his forehead.

Lance is waiting anxiously outside, and pulls the washcloth away when he gets out. “What happened?”

“I tripped on my pants.”

He pauses. “Your pants?”

Keith sighs. “Yes my pants. And I hit my head on the bench. It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? Do we need to—”

“Lance, I am so tired of not feeling in control of my body can we please just go eat some food?”

He concedes, pressing the cloth back against his forehead gently. “Do you want to walk? I can carry you.”

“Lance—”

“If I princess carry you it’ll look like a big joke and not like you can’t walk. You’ve just gotta swoon and I have to literally kick open the door to the dining hall.”

He pinches his nose. “Fine. Let’s just go.”

True to his word, Lance kicks the door open, and Keith puts a hand up to his forehead to play his part.

“We’ve arrived,” Lance says, and it’s so serious that Keith can’t help but laugh. Lance looks a little offended, and then his face softens into something really nice that Keith can’t tie an emotion to. He likes it.

“Give him to me,” Hunk says. “He needs food and I am ready to provide.”

Hunk’s made a really heavy and warm soup that tastes absolutely fantastic. He eats two and a half bowls before his body’s decided he’s full. His head already feels clearer and it’s easier to sit up straight.

Lance eats lazily next to him, mostly just stirring his soup around while looking over every couple seconds to make sure Keith’s okay. He takes Lance’s hand in his own and gives it a reassuring squeeze. Lance looks between him and their hands, surprised, before a soft smile graces his lips. Keith feels warm.

“That’s fucking gay,” Pidge says from across the table.

“Language,” Shiro chides without looking up from whatever document he’s reading.

That embarrassed feeling floods his chest, and Lance squeezes his hand this time, pulling his attention back.

“We could be even gayer, Pidge. What would you do then?”

“Exactly,” Keith adds. “He could be braiding my hair right here in front of everyone. What about that?”

Shiro looks up, surprised. Keith gives him what he hopes is a reassuring smile, and a look of pride crosses his face. A small thumbs up is given before he turns back to his tablet.

“Allow me to go vomit from how cute you two are.”

“What, did you catch Keith’s mud parasite too?”

They start it as a whisper that he can’t quite make out, but the tenseness of Shiro’s face gives it away.

“Vore,” they chant, slamming their fists against the table. “Vore vore vore vore vore vore vore!”

“Why is it like this,” Shiro mutters, covering his ears. “You two are exactly the same.”

“Where do you think learned what vore meant, Shiro? Do you really think Matt would keep me in the dark about your guys’ inside jokes?”

Lance makes a horrified face. “You’re into that?”

“No!” Shiro tries. “I made a joke about how small of a person he was and he just started making vore comments all the time. It was a never ending stream, he even got Keith in on it.”

“Wow Shiro,” Hunk says. “That really didn’t work out too well _vore_ you.”

“Yes!” Pidge gives him the loudest, best landing high five Keith has ever seen.

“Hunk,” Lance sounds betrayed. “I thought we were friends.”

“Oh Lance,” Keith says. “What would you ever do without the _vore_ of us to explain this to you.”

Lance pulls his hand back with a disgusted gasp. “I can’t live like this. Keith, I’m leaving you for your properly vore disgusted brother.”

“Zero access to hair braiding,” Keith retorts.

He stops for a second. “Zero?”

Keith nods.

Lance seems to mull it over, while the rest of them watch in amused silence. He comes to a decision, pulling their hands back together. “Sorry Shiro, but the hair braiding is a big deal.”

“It’s okay Lance, I understand. I have no hair to offer for braiding.”

“That’s not really true,” Hunk says. “You should braid the white sometime, just as a look.”

“No, he did that once,” Keith says. “Not with the white, but back at the Garrison. Iverson was getting mad at him about the bangs being in his eyes, so Shiro just braided them up and out of the way for an entire week until he caved and stopped saying anything about it.”

“I’d like to never return to braided fringe, so for all intents and purposes, I have no braidable hair.”

Lance has been slowly scooting his chair closer to Keith this entire conversation so as not to draw attention to himself, and when he rests his head down on Keith’s shoulder, he jumps.

“This is okay, right?” Lance asks near inaudibly.

“Yeah,” he says squeezing his hand. “It’s okay.”

“Cool. How’re you feeling?”

“Better,” and he is. He’s not nearly as dizzy as before, and the nausea is almost completely gone. He feels content right now, sitting here with Lance’s head on his shoulder, hand in hand.

“Cool,” Lance says again.

And it is.

**Author's Note:**

> this took  
> too damn long to write for what it is  
> also i absolutely love sick fics and there arent enough sick fics with keith in them  
> another note, i wrote this fic with a parasite entirely for the purpose of pidge getting to say vore  
> that was my plan all along


End file.
